•••
During your childhood, you have countless opportunities to witness the extent to which your father distrusts the white man, whoever he may be, even if he has the best intentions in the world. For David Baldwin, it is not only the white man who is bad: all white people are, without exception.
You tell the story of a white school-teacher who had to confront your suspicious father when she got the notion to take you to the theater. You were nine or ten years old, and you had just written a play that the school-teacher, devoted and admiring as she was, had already put on at school. She believed that in order to complement your education in drama, you had to live the theater, watch actors perform, feel the emotion of the audience. But at home, the theater, as well as movies and books, synonyms of perversion and of the grasp of the “white demon,” were forbidden. So was jazz, the “music of bought Negros,” that fascinates men of color who are caught in the trap of the white demon. David Baldwin took the invitation to the theater as an insult, a challenge to his authority, and an intrusion by a malicious force into the house of God. He has the habit of repeating a citation from the Bible: “As my house and myself, we will serve the Lord.” Never mind that he is incapable of meeting the needs of his family, or that his sons are reduced to engaging in an activity that young black men of the time could not shake: they were shoe-shiners, whose “pathetic” image was further perpetuated through advertisements. It was an image as moving as that of a “darky bootblack doing a buck and wing to the clatter of condescending coins.”10 Moreover, David Baldwin does not hold it against his wife for working as a maid in white homes. If money does not have a smell, one might add here, too, that it does not have a color. .
That a white woman should offer to take one of David Baldwin’s sons to the theater is nevertheless enough to ignite his indignation. He immediately called into question the school-teacher’s interest in his son, convinced that behind her motivation and zeal there were some diabolical games at play: the white man is always out to get the black man. It was therefore against your father’s will that the school-teacher should help you experience the emotion of a theatrical performance for the first time.
Would David Baldwin have had the same reaction if the school-teacher had been a woman of color? Certainly not. You would hold on to these words for the rest of your life: “. . he warned me that my white friends in high school were not really my friends, and that I would see, when I was older, how white people would do anything to keep a Negro down. Some of them could be nice, he admitted, but none of them were to be trusted and most of them were not even nice. The best thing was to have as little to do with them as possible. I did not feel this way and I was certain, in my innocence, that I never would.”11
•••
David Baldwin is black, and does not realize that he is beautiful, you point out. You add that he dies with a fierce conviction of his ugliness. No doubt overcome by his own frustration, he makes tasteless jokes about your “ugliness” and your “big eyes” to the point of saying that you are the most unfortunate child he has ever laid eyes on. You were affected for a long time by his idea of ugliness. At a young age, we end up accepting what is said about us, especially when it comes from adults. It remains this way until something comes along to contradict those early notions, to make things right, even if only superficially.
You study yourself. You think about these eyes, so prominent on your face, that you inherited from Emma Berdis Jones, and you ask yourself if your father might not be right. What purpose could these big eyes serve? Why do they protrude so much? Had Mother Nature really punished you, or was she distinguishing you in some way? Desperation grips you. How many times have you told the story that made you discover that there is always something “uglier” than oneself in this world? In fact, when you were still just a child, you saw in the street, from a window in your apartment, a woman with eyes even more prominent than yours, with, on top of everything, and as if nature had had it in for her, oversized lips. You conclude that she is uglier than you. You run to tell your mother, to console her, to prove to her that you no longer have any reason to be tormented by this physical detail, and that human beings are judged by the quality of their souls. .
In fact, when David Baldwin focuses on your supposed ugliness, when he makes it the subject of his frequent tormenting, he hits your weak spot, and from it you draw a painful conclusion about the consequences of being a “bastard”: through his behavior, your step-father is indirectly attacking your biological father. . This leads you to regret yourself, and to reproach this unknown man, your biological father, for having approached Emma, and having transmitted to you her physical disgrace; impossible to erase, obvious at first glace. From that point forward, when you rest your big eyes on him, you imagine a pathetic being — a very old, frozen statue. .
Despite his despicable character that suggests David Baldwin is completely cold to his family — to the point that you describe him as “a monster in the house. Maybe he saved all kinds of souls, but he lost all of his children, every single one of them,” a monster experiencing a visceral aversion toward the white race — you also remember moments where this man seemed to you at last like a devoted father: human, feeling, attentive, managing the best he could for his family. You remember a time when your mother would carry you on her shoulders, and David Baldwin would be walking beside her, smiling at you. You remember, too, the image of this old man offering you candy.
But very quickly you recall the harsh reality of your father who pronounces you good-for-nothing, and does not hesitate to beat you to a pulp when you lose the change you are given to buy kerosene for heating the family home. Did this hateful man prepare you for life’s battles? You say your father “. . was perhaps too old to have as many children in a strange land as he had. The world was changing so fast, and he was in such trouble that he could not change with it. . He had nine children he could hardly feed. His pain was so great that he translated himself into silence, rigidity. . sometimes into beating us and finally into madness. . Without him I might be dead because knowing his life and his pain taught me how to fight.”14
This man sets up barriers between himself and others. He has difficulty maintaining close relationships with his friends who, one by one, distance themselves from him little by little. He is sick for years, but the illness from which he suffers is far from being physicaclass="underline" everything happens in his head, in his mind, to the point that you can no longer grasp the internal pain of a being who slides into the most extreme paranoia, stands in front of the window for hours reciting prayers and humming religious songs. It is in this distant, celestial world that he feels best. From this point forward, his hatred is out in the open. One might even say that he resents his nine children, resents their entry into this repulsive world that does not acknowledge him and that the Lord will make disappear. The paranoia reaches its peak when he begins to refuse to eat at home, convinced that his own family is plotting to poison him. .
•••
You are forced to take the place of your “unfit,” gruff, austere father, distrusting of his own family. You help your mother in her difficult role as mother and head of household, without asking yourself whether this role should fall instead into the hands of Samuel, David Baldwin’s son from his previous marriage and several years your senior. Still, you marvel at his courage, which he displayed when he saved you from drowning, for example. . Would this episode itself earn you the name “Moses,” who wrote the story of Israel and led his people out of Egypt to deliver them from slavery? Perhaps you, too, have a mission on this Earth, and this mission is passed to you through the knowledge of God, and through the freedom of writing.